Читать книгу Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals онлайн

55 страница из 204

On the conduct of man towards his fellow-men in this life the influence of Christianity appears to have been as great as that of paganism was small. Duty towards one’s neighbour hardly came within the purview of Hellenic religion. If we look at the supreme acts of worship in ancient times, we cannot fail to be struck by the disunion of the religious and the ethical. A certain purity was no doubt required of those who attended the mysteries of Eleusis; but by that purity was meant physical cleanliness and, strangely enough, a pure use of the Greek language, just as much as any moral temperance or rectitude; and the required condition was largely attained by the use or avoidance of certain foods and by bathing in the sea. Their cleanliness in fact was of the same confused kind, half physical and half moral, as that which the inhabitants of Tenos were formerly wont, and perhaps still continue, to seek on S. John the Baptist’s day (June 24) by leaping thrice through a bonfire and crying ‘Here I leave my sins and my fleas[55]’: and it was acquired by means equally material. There is nothing conspicuously ethical in such a purity as this.